Empire of the Elite: Inside Condé Nast, the Media Dynasty That Reshaped America

Condé Nast magazines “defin[ed] our modern notions of class... and taste,” according to this exhaustive debut history from New York Times reporter Grynbaum. The company’s namesake, Condé Montrose Nast, worked his way up through the magazine world and began amassing his empire in 1909 when he took control of Vogue, which was then a niche publication with an old-money readership. “Nast recognized,” Grynbaum writes, “that social aspiration” could be “lucratively exploited.” He targeted Vogue toward not just the wealthy but also to those who wanted to be, and in just a few years the magazine became a “global tastemaker.” Samuel I. Newhouse bought the business in 1959, and Newhouse’s son, S.I. Newhouse Jr., took over in 1975. Grynbaum describes the ensuing shake-up of the magazine industry as he revived Vanity Fair and acquired rival publications including the New Yorker. Throughout, Grynbaum digs into the inner workings of Condé Nast in exquisite detail, tracing the career of editor Tina Brown, who helmed both Vanity Fair and the New Yorker, and shedding light on the “accusations of racial insensitivity” at Bon Appétit in 2020. Grynbaum makes clear that at its height, the culture of Condé Nast was one of exclusionary wealth, where “budgets were for the unimaginative.” It’s a definitive account of a media titan. (July)